With the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in full swing at Chicago’s McCormick Place this past weekend, Johnson & Johnson and its latest lung cancer campaign towered high above the scene just a few miles away at the Windy City’s tallest skyscraper.
To highlight how “life is more breathtaking than lung cancer” and promote its Rybrevant-Lazcluze combo therapy, the company took its new #BreathtakingMoments messaging sky-high during ASCO weekend in an event hosted on the 99th floor of the Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, on Friday.
Among poster-sized images of happy moments, a panel of cancer survivors and patient advocates shared their stories and their own “breathtaking moments” before the gathering headed up to the 103rd floor to take in the view from the tower’s iconic Skydeck observation point.
“Time isn't just measured in months or years, it's measured in milestones, in everyday moments, both big and small,” Sean Swarner, a two-time cancer survivor and world-record adventurer, said during the panel.
Swarner led a discussion with lung cancer survivor Maggie McCloskey, patient advocate and podcast host Dave Bjork and J&J’s president of solid tumor, U.S. oncology, Biljana Naumovic, M.D.
“For me, the 'Breathtaking' campaign is about empowering patients to find a voice” and bringing the “right therapy” to “every ZIP code,” Naumovic said, after sharing her own experience of being a caregiver to her mother-in-law, who passed away after a lung cancer diagnosis.
“Every breath she took was breathtaking,” the J&J exec said.
Alongside the event, J&J made a pledge to donate $1 to lung cancer awareness nonprofit the White Ribbon Project for every social media post that uses the #BreathtakingMoments hashtag, with a cap of $25,000.
Naumovic, who acknowledged in an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing that her fear of heights made the event particularly breathtaking, pointed to “a great need” to provide patients with a drug that can give them “more life." According to the exec, that therapy could be J&J’s Rybrevant-Lazcluze combo in EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer.
Citing the phase 3 Mariposa study and its expected overall survival results of at least an extra year of life over the current standard of care, the combo’s clinical profile is “remarkable and breathtaking” in its own right, according to Joshua Bauml, M.D., leader of J&J’s lung cancer disease area stronghold, who joined Naumovic in the interview.
The latest Rybrevant-Lazcluze data, unveiled at this year’s ASCO meeting, assessed quality-of-life benefits of the combo through patient-reported outcomes of dermatologic reactions from the phase 2 Cocoon trial. The study was presented by Jill Feldman, a lung cancer survivor who co-founded the patient advocacy group EGFR Resisters. Feldman helped out with Cocoon’s trial design as a member of its steering committee, Bauml said.
J&J has long touted the Rybrevant-Lazcluze combo’s standard-of-care potential, especially after beating out AstraZeneca’s leading Tagrisso in a head-to-head study earlier this year. The therapy won FDA approval last August as a frontline treatment, making waves in a space where “we have not had any progress” for the last decade, Naumovic said.
The drugmaker is also weighing Rybrevant’s potential benefits in dozens of other clinical trials, including in colorectal cancer and head and neck cancer.